


Theo Decker and the Wild Years

by colish3



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: An Unsaid Love Confession, Coming of Age, Falling In Love, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Recognizing Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:09:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colish3/pseuds/colish3
Summary: It was in my seventeenth year that I took my studies more seriously. That is to say that I started taking Adderall and joined a club like they always asked me to. Literature and poetry weren't graduation requirements of mine, but the teacher of this particular class never made an effort to talk about my past with me, and I was grateful. For his class I wrote what I thought would be my first and last love poem. Of course, I never said  “love you” in person, nor who it was that I loved, but it was enough for me that the professor could assume it was someone like Pippa.A coming of age story taking place in the years between when he loses Boris and when he meets him again.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Theo Decker and the Wild Years

It was in my seventeenth year that I took my studies more seriously. That is to say that I started taking Adderall and joined a club like they always asked me to. Literature and poetry weren't graduation requirements of mine, but the teacher of this particular class never made an effort to talk about my past with me, and I was grateful. For his class I wrote what I thought would be my first and last love poem. Of course, I never said “love you” in person, nor who it was that I loved, but it was enough for me that the professor could assume it was someone like Pippa.

After writing it at my desk, I tore it apart. “Shit for brains!” I yelled at myself. It was enough for me to feel the self hatred. If anything, it almost elated me to feel something at all. That was why it didn’t hurt me when I realized that I had three minutes to get to Mr. Watson’s class and I would have to turn in the torn sheet as it was all I had written. I taped it back together and titled it at the top: “I’m Sorry I Never Lived on the Streets,” by Theodore Decker.

_ On _ _ the day I became an orphan, my life was set in smoke; no solid land around me from the moment I awoke. _

_ Each day I thought I slaved away, screamed each time I awoke; I stayed silent in their home _

_ I never knew I was lucky _

_ In my years no longer an orphan, my family found me _

_ funny thing is. but of whom found whom, should I say we found we  _

_ in my years no longer an orphan, _ _ I _ _ stole and stretched, believed I was unloved each time I retched _

_ I heard you laugh from the bedroom _

_ The day before I became an orphan, I sat in the park with you, watching a movie where we created our own blue _

_ There’s a movie playing in my head all times of the day like we wrote together in that park from night to the dawn of day and when I see it I look  _ _ for _ _ , I look for the time we could have spent together if I just said yes. I’m sorry I didn’t say yes. I’m sorry I didn’t make you say yes.  _

_ Our movie plays in California showing. A film appreciation essay I write makes me realize that the best and worst  _ _ times _ _ I ever had were with you, my years no longer an orphan. _

I got a C-. The prose was off, the number of syllables didn’t match between stanzas, and, according to the professor, it seemed like I didn’t try at all on the technical aspects. Which was true; I didn’t. However, he gave me a passing grade saying it made him cry. 

In all the times I thought about kissing Pippa, I think each time was because she was my first kiss and also the first person I ever shared my life with. I missed sharing so desperately, hidden under all the secrets I had. I wished to share this poem with her but chose not to when I realized showing her a love poem made for someone else may end all prospects I had in pursuing her.

It was two weeks later after I had turned in no more assignments when Mr. Watson came up to me. He said, shocking even me, “I’ll give you a chance to redo the first poem. You need three to complete this quarter, and I’ll count it as a second.” 

  
  


He was kind to offer me it; God knew how I was going to graduate anywhere near “on time” when I did only the bare minimum and sometimes less. Kind as he was, and uninterested as he remained in anything other than my poetry, I sat down in his class to complete it, not even bothering to move from my seat. I looked at the poem and almost reread it before knowing that I couldn’t bring myself to write of him again.

It had been three days since I last thought of him, an all time record, especially since I had bought pot from Samantha in Physics younger sister. Was it embarrassing to buy weed from a high school freshman, maybe, but I didn’t care. Not until now when I remembered how we used to buy it from Kotku. I bet Boris could’ve written a poem far better for Kotku, the way he picked up bits and pieces of language and blended it seamlessly through it. Well, as long as he wasn’t talking like a gangster. 

Almost, I decided, almost I would’ve written a poem to Kotku. Instead, I wrote one about Saoirse who I had lost my virginity to, kind of, four and a half months before. She had a boyfriend at the time, but I had come to expect those were the kind of girls I would get involved with.

_ In the wind and the wine, there is no more time. _

_ I see you tonight, I see you tonight. _

_ On a robin's chilled head, our fingers fall to bed. _

_ Where is he tonight, I won’t ask tonight. _

_ We fall frigid and fight, he ain’t here tonight. _

_ Why do we always fuck in the night. _

_ I respect your commitment, your panties are dripped in; _

_ You never put up a fight. _

_ If you did I would leave, that’s my guarantee. _

_ Please just tonight, please put up a fight. _

_ Your boyfriend is calling. G2G, AMBER NEEDS HER PHONE. _

I titled it CALL ME L8R and turned it in for a grade. 

I had hoped that, upon turning it in, he would take it home to grade later. If I may say something self pitying, as I was at the time, my hopes were once again dashed. He sat there and read it as I stood in front of him, uncomfortable and questioning whether I was permitted to leave. Two minutes in, he tapped on his desk in a beat. Four minutes in, he turned to me.

“Theo,” he said, “This meets all technical requirements for a beginning class, but it’s not the rewrite I hoped it would be.”

“No sir,” I said, “It’s not quite a rewrite.” The  _ quite _ was added for dramatic effect, or at least, as a way to lead into it. 

“I hoped  you would redo it because I wanted a refined version of that emotion. This, well, Theo, there is a beat and a rhythm and something akin to want, but there is no desire. This one  won’t– hasn’t made me cry.”

I  thought for a moment of  tears , and how Mr. Watson said he read poems that left him confused to his wife, she had a sense for putting two and two together. He loved it when she laughed aloud to a piece, always more reactive than him, but if it made her cry, he would inevitably give a passing grade.

It was then that I knew how to speak. “The feelings are all there, if you read it correctly.”

“Oh, is that so?” the professor said with a smirk, genuinely waiting on what I had to say.

With a confidence known only to liars, I nodded my head and spoke again, “It’s a sequel. Read the first to your wife, wait twenty minutes, then read her this. Tell her it’s meant to take place immediately after the first. I’m sure she’ll notice how it changes who I’m talking with.”

“Twenty minutes? Odd, but if that’s the best way to read it.”

  
  


That was Tuesday. Two days later on Thursday, when Our class next met, he came up to me. 

“My wife hated your poem,” He said.

As he stood silently, giving me time to process, or maybe for the drama of it all. I was taken aback by the comment until he  spoke again. “ You get an A.” Then, I was taken aback further, nearly thrown against the wall mentally. 

“What do you mean, she hated  it.”

“I would say that she is a middle school teacher, works with all sorts of kids. I told her you were seventeen, and she said you were one too, even if I think you’re close enough to eighteen. She thinks it’s too profane and far too sad. My thoughts: I know what teachers you avoid. The nice ones, am I right? I think you would hate her teaching style.”

I thought once again of the last time I shared. “If it was middle school, I think I would like her.”

On the next Tuesday, I ditched his class.

On Thursday I showed up to class twenty-nine minutes late in an hour and twenty minute class. He let me in without even a look. He read aloud a poem about a man who strangles his girlfriend with her own hair to keep her untarnished from the world. There was no chastisement from missing class or being late. Now I realize it was pity, or maybe, understanding on his part to keep me from being scared off. At the time however, I thought he simply didn’t care which suited me in the best way possible. 

Not until three weeks later did he talk to me again, holding me back after class. 

“Theo,” he said, “Do you have a minute.” It seemed like all of my talks with him would be right when I was trying to leave.

When I replied in the affirmative, he continued. “You need to turn in one more poem before your closing essay. I suggest another sequel. My wife would like to read a third.” 

I had a suspecting feeling that he meant his wife wanted to know if I’d be okay. The answer was… The answer was. At the time, I didn’t know, and right now. Well. Right now I don’t want to answer, not even to myself. I wasn’t okay if I can say that much. 

“Alright, I can do that.”And I could. I did, if that’s the correct answer.

_ It’s winter now, and I must pretend that I do not want to see you again. _

_ My father knows you, H is his name. You’ve never met him, but I suspect he feels the same. _

_ There’s a care I feel. I didn’t before. I must confess… I may not know you anymore. _

_ But I know who I was with you so close, it is with him that I share you the most. _

_ In a failing cafe with a full mouth I say a name I would never else say aloud.  _

_ With you, stomach aching and palms aching, I had never felt my mouth so full. Your name whispered and yearned and. I do not do that anymore. _

For three days, I sat trying to find a name to title it. I almost gave it yours. Almost. In the dearest days Thursday through Monday I considered tearing it up, but I didn’t. Instead, I took a pen and paper and a library book on iambic pentameter, which I never ended up using and tried to rewrite it. In the end, I went to Mr. Watson and had him help me.

“I like the rhyming scheme.” He muttered down into the paper, still holding it in his hands where he sat at his desk.

That’s not what I wanted him to say. He must have seen my frown because he turned away before he talked again. “What is it that you want to change?”

“The technical elements.” He looked at me again, built of walls. I struggled for a clearer answer. “I want it to be better.”

“No,” He said. “What is it that you hate?”

I thought long and hard. What was he searching for? I knew it, deep down. He wanted the truth, so I fought dragging it up from the depth of my being. Well, I dragged up most of it. 

“Her,” I said.

Obviously I had not said that with enough conviction because instead of taking me at face value he asked, “Are you sure?” as if I could be anything but.

I was sure of one thing and that was that the answer was  _ Him! _

And that was when I realized, hearing it echo in the empty room, that I had said it aloud. My first reaction wasn’t tinnitus like I felt it should be after yet another trauma because, indubitably, this was a trauma. No it was a quiver in my mouth then a blur to my vision and I realized how relieved I felt not to see his face. I hadn’t cried in over a year. 

“Come and sit down, Theo.” 

My eyes didn’t work, but my ears still did, and like the child his wife thought I was, I followed his directions keenly. Not that I had the ability to think about it then, but it’s what I craved most of all. Being treated like a child and told what to do. In that moment, I craved who I was before like no other moment in my memory; a child cared for and loved, no matter how much I ran away from it. The mountainous clarity of my desire terrified me. 

He handed me a tissue and I  kept my place, sitting head down at my veneered desk.

He said to me words that I to this day do not believe.  _ You are, and I mean this, okay. You will always be okay. _

I cried long and hard in his room while he stood back and watched. He never touched my back or shoulder like another teacher might, and on one drunk occasion, I thought about thanking him. Not for his kindness or the passing grade, but for not touching me. Although I rethought it when I realized how poorly that would go over. 

In the end, I saw that Professor twice more. To turn in my final paper, something I only stopped in briefly to do, and then to turn in my revised poem: “Boris” by Theodore Decker.

_ A shot in the ass I had never felt before. That’s what It was like with you, amore. _

_ Hollowed out ribcage, I burrowed inside. It’s there I lived with a sick sense of pride. _

_ Like kid’s vitamins and piss of a dog, so many things I dare not adore _

_ Wild guess, those aren’t days I talk of much, except to my new father in our hutch. _

_ I cannot say it like this can I? Let’s try again. A new scene, creativity, let's start with the date: _

_ It's winter now and I must pretend/I do not want to see you again.  _

_ My father knows you now by name/you've never met but I suspect he feels mine same  _

_ H knows me deeply most of all/you and i like his partner in that fall _

_ There’s a care I feel. I didn’t before/distance bars knowledge amore _

_ But I know who I was with you so close/it’s with him I share you the most. _

_ In a failing cafe with a full mouth/I say a name I would dare not say else. _

  
  


_ Still, I don’t see us in this. How about free-verse? _

_ my mouth was filled with your name, an ache in my stomach and my palms, so I have whispered and yearned and. I do not do that anymore. _

_ No. _

_ I’m so sorry my love for I cannot comprehend what it means to no longer see you again. _

_ Fuck a rhyme. Boris, please. Come and make a home in me. _

**Author's Note:**

> So... I'm halfway through the book, and I was overcome with how much I wanted to see Boris again, and I decided to write a poem about how badly Theo must too. 
> 
> If people like it I may write another chapter/sequel but if not I think this stands on its own.


End file.
